Rankins at Dusk

I have been slack the past two weeks and have not shot a fresh roll of film. In fact, my photographic efforts have been limited to recording my son's hockey semi-final (and there were not many frames worth a second look, but that's another story).

Anyway, this shot was taken at dusk. I have been trying to vary my times getting out to familiar subjects to see the difference it makes to the image created.

Rankins is a news agency located in the centre of the Queens Street Mall. At dusk all manner of folk are wandering home or hanging out to meet up with friends. I like the variety of movement captured across the frame. This was taken hand held using a sign as an impromptu tripod.

If you are wondering about the square crop (no, I haven't a hassy) it is because this is the last frame of the most recent roll shot and only half the frame exposed correctly. This is a feature (?) of hand rolling where you are never certain of getting complete frames. (om2n, zuiko 35mm f2.8, hp5 @ 400)

Riverside path

I have been a little busy so have fallen behind with my "one roll per week" ambition, although this was shot last week I have only just managed to develop and scan the results ...

I admit that I am enjoying again getting into the habit of carrying my camera to work every day. It seems to encourage me to take different paths between the train station and my building, even if I do not have the camera out intending to take a shot. I also find that I am constantly looking for different opportunities to create images and appreciating the different light etc each day.

This image was taken at the end of the riverside walkway near the Botanical Gardens. There are many yachts moored on this reach of the river and the boaties tend to leave bicycles chained to the railings as convenient land transport.

I have also been again experimenting with development methods. This roll going through a ID11 soup diluted 1+1 with water. This has given good tonal range for me with medium format film in the past, but I was wondering if it would give too much grain for my liking in 35mm format ... as it happens I am very happy with the result and might continue along this path for a while. (om2n, zuiko 35mm f2.8, hp5+ @ 400)

Drop In

I worked a little later than I intended on Friday night and thought that I would wander past the Treasury Casino to take the last few frames in my film. It was quite dark by the time I got there and there wasn't a cloud in the sky, so I wasn't sure if there would be enough interest to have a postable shot.

My attempts turned out better than I expected, given that I didn't look directly through the viewfinder and was using my fingers as a makeshift tripod ... actually, I had the camera resting on the top of a police sign, which was too tall for me to line up, but I could still see a bit of the image in the glass of the viewfinder and guessed the rest.

The shots from this angled were far more successful than the shots I took from the bridge ... I soon found out that the vibrations caused by the traffic do not make for very good images ... (om2n, zuiko 35mm f2.8, hp5+ @ 400)